The way you hit it. I can’t believe it. I ain’t never seen an Astro like dat…the way you swing it, you make my fantasy team go…DUH DOING DOING DOING! I had to look up the lyrics to that song so I could figure out how to spell ‘DOING’, by the way, and it still feels wrong. What are you doing? Doing’ing? Must be like Polish and polish. Did you read those two right? You read the last one like what you do to all of your fantasy baseball trophies and the first one is the one you hear in all your grandpa’s racist ‘screw in a lightbulb’ jokes. It’s all in the capital letter to pronounce it differently. Maybe all caps makes doing refer to pitching a tent. This is a fantasy baseball blog, why are you talking about camping?!? It’s summer, you should go camping at least once readers, really. Enjoy the sunshine while you can. Don’t live in a cave writing about fantasy sports all day like we do. Hrm, I don’t know how to transition back to the point of this conversation now so I’ll just awkward segue to it. Matt Dominguez is home for five games and I want him on my team for that amount of time. Wanna know why? Well read in the next paragraph as I explain it for week 13 of the 2013 fantasy baseball season…

Firstly and foremostedly, this is a weird, thin week. It was hard to find a team that played 7 games – I don’t even know if there is one – and of the teams that played more games, I didn’t find many appealing plays that were consistent enough to buy into. Wow, doesn’t THAT get you excited to read about Matt for this week or what! It’s clear I used to work in sales. The key words in that last sentence are ‘used to’. I don’t sell things very well unless I fully believe in them and so I’m here to tell you this isn’t the biggest/boldest call that I’d stand by like I would my last two calls of Adam Lind and Brandon Moss. That all said, the thing Matt has going for him is that all 5 games are at home…what you need to know more than that? You don’t have faith in me enough to just roll with it from there? Fine, I’ll give you these reasons: 129 at bats, 8 HRs, 28 RBI, a .310 average and a .566 slugging percentage in 36 games. That’s a 36 HR, 126 HR pace given a 162 game season. That’s All-Star numbers for a guy hitting .242 on the year and I’m sure there will be some regression eventually from Matt but I don’t see a good reason to bet on that for this week. Though smoke and mirrors Jake Westbrook takes the mound on Tuesday, Lance Lynn – the guy who gave up 7 ER to the Marlins just two starts ago – and the Angels pitching staff round out the week. If you haven’t noticed a theme with these Creeper posts, you’ll notice the Angels have been a source of creeper goodness as they own the 4th worst team ERA in baseball right now. Just like with Tehol, I like taking advantage of the weaknesses of my opponents:

So if you need a shot at a power surge at 3rd, you can find Matt (12% Yahoo/8% ESPN) in pretty much every league right now.

Bonus Round!

Andres Torres – He gets 4 lefties this week, one of which is Kershaw. He hits .324 against LHP overall but dinged his knee and left Friday night’s game. That said, you need a shot at a little speed and a good average, he might help.

Eric Young – Finally gets a shot to be a full time player and if you believe his 2012 breakout was real, you’ll notice he hit nearly .100 points higher against lefties vs righties then (.383/.291) and much like Torres he gets 4 lefties on the slate for week 13.

Just now. If we’re giving points for completions, I think there should be the same amount of negative points for incompletes. Don’t think you deserve any points if you go 20/41. Not really big on bonus points but I’m not against them because you have full point touchdowns. The 15 YPP for wide outs balances out the extra bump in PPR (.8 vs .5) so I’m cool with it. No major qualms other than the reward for completions vs no negative for incomplete.

@Sky: not a fan of the QB flex, those that get it exploit it, those that don’t lose terribly, I know my league. Not set on 8 teams, I want ten and I have another that might play which gives us 9, if I find a tenth we go to ten teams…

kickers are like catchers, you might hate them but they are part of the game

will think about the incompletes, I’ll plug it in and see what it looks like

Kickers are just a gamble in fantasy and there’s very little expertise in picking one over another. I don’t think the comparison RE: catchers is apt there.

You can set roster limits. Even at 10 teams, that leaves a lot of top 100 players out in the pool. QB is the Position for fantasy scoring, leaving 10+ ownable ones either on the bench or on waivers just seems like a waste.

I’d keep it even but that’s just me. I think you should get points but I don’t like scoring tons off of completions. Mine is set to 0.1/-0.1 so only if you complete an insane amount do you get much for it.

We can get it figured out as we go, there’s no rush. And in the end, I’m still playing in your league so however it goes is how it goes and ill be there

@Sky: just updated the changes, I’ll sit and think on them, I actually like the no kicker, I put the QB flex in there, it will make bye weeks easier. This year is going to de-value a lot of past QB’s, but thats fine with me, I’m going to try and get feedback elsewhere too

Yeah, more feedback is usually best with stuff like this. As an aside, was wondering if you’d like in on my league if it doesn’t refill. There’s usually one or two guys who drop out from season to season. Figure I might as well see if you’re up for throwing another league on your plate for the Fall.

@Sky: all new changes are made, my buddy is pissed i took to much away from the defensive players but I explained that too many were getting ridiculous totals last year. I think he liked taking advantage of the loop holes and doesn’t like I’m trying to make it as fair as possible to reflect the different levels of fantasy players

@Jack Full of Hate: Well I hope he stays around. I just like trying to make things as even as possible so getting the best player means something. One of the guys who probably isn’t returning this year didn’t like reduced touchdowns. I called it the Matt Forte factor. If Matt Forte does everything for your team to get you to the gaol line and Michael Bush scores, does it mean Michael Bush was better? Nope, it just means it’s his role. So giving points for carries and only 4 for touchdowns balanced that out. Both would have good days, but one would better reflect the work being done than the other by comparison.

@Sky: I’m not worried about him not coming back, he’s all in, just feeling he isn’t in love with the changes yet, I like that the changes still give the traditional ranks their relevance but also makes big weeks by a receiver a huge win for you. I really want ten teams and can probably get 9 as of now and hoping the 10th will appear like the virgin mary

We’re grown ass men and the start of fantasy seasons is the one time we get to feel like children again and get giddy with anticipation. It takes you back to that time before you realized Santa Claus wasn’t real and before you ever saw your parents having sex. Don’t push it away, embrace it!

@Sky: wait, what? Santa is not real? i thought he only went to my parents house all these years because I never changed my mailing address……and my parents have never had sex. My mom always told me she ordered towels from the Sears catalog and they dropped me off. Thanks alot sky *sobbing*

Picking up a guy for the lacking Monday/Thursday games. Only 5 teams play both days. Narrowed down to Rasmus, Brantley, Stubbs, and Flaherty. Colby will be benched Thursday vs Lester. Brantley and Stubbs are not exactly thriving of late. Flaherty? Raking last 5 games and went off today. Is he the pickup? He faces 2 RHP.

Thanks! Really wish Moss had a couple more hits on the week (only 6/25) but I’ll take the 2 HRs and be happy with it.

They both have short schedules this week and Moss still has righties lined up. I’m not opposed to it but you might be jumping ship for the same line and Moss is in the better lineup spot and lineup in general.

I am taking your advice on Dominguez… right to the friggin’ First Bank of Fantasy Value! May he hit 10 home runs this week.

That said, what *is* up with this schedule this week? One of the appeals of baseball is that there are numerous games every day for six months. Just 4 games today? WTF?

This is why we have World Series games being played in the cold winds of late October, when the boys of summer should have long ago packed their bats up and headed to their off-season mansions in Florida.

Give me a crack at that baseball schedule. I’ll have the entire season (playoffs included!) wrapped up by the end of September!

Yeah, beats me. I just think back on all the doubleheaders up to this point. If we all knew everyone had days off like this this week, why not schedule them for now to pad it out? See, that would make the most sense to me: schedule days like this knowing full well there’ll be rainouts and then schedule accordingly. Crazy SOBs.